Nursing Homes Under Fire for Lack of Sprinklers

CMS has indicated that as many as 385 nursing homes in 39 states have failed to meet requirements to install sprinkler systems to combat potentially deadly fires in those facilities. According to the Associated Press, the nursing homes with the non-compliant sprinkler systems house 52,000 patients who are being put at unnecessary risk of deadly nursing home fires.

“Sprinklered”

The lack of sprinklers poses a compliance problem for some nursing homes because of a deadline set by CMS requiring all nursing homes to be “sprinklered” by August 13, 2013. CMS warned that it would not grant extensions for the timeline that was officially set out in a 2008 final rule (73 FR 47075). According to the Associated Press, CMS has indicated that compliance has reached 97 percent, with 3 percent of facilities falling out of compliance on the sprinkler mandate. CMS reportedly told the Associated Press that “CMS and states are actively engaging with the rest of the facilities to verify their compliance with this regulation and will take appropriate actions for noncompliance to ensure the safety of residents.”

Slow Compliance

The path to sprinklers in nursing homes has been a slow one. In 2003, attention was brought to the issue when two nursing homes, without sprinkler systems, burned and left 31 people killed. One of the nursing homes that caught fire was the Greenwood Nursing Home in Hartford, Connecticut and the other facility was the NHC Healthcare Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Although at the time of those fires, newly constructed facilities were required to have sprinkler systems, older facilities were not required to be retrofitted. In 2008, CMS issued the requirement that all nursing homes were to install sprinklers and gave the lengthy five year deadline for compliance. Despite the slow start, the numbers have improved from last December when, according to the Associated Press, CMS reported that 714 homes lacked adequate sprinkler systems.

Cost

One reason for the lack of compliance is the cost associated with the installation of adequate sprinklers. For example, in 2003, following the Greenwood fire, the estimated cost of installing sprinklers ranged from $270,000 to $363,000 depending on whether a system needed to be upgraded or no system was in place at all.

CMS Action

According to the Associated Press, CMS indicated that it could resolve continued non-compliance with the sprinkler requirement by denying payment and terminating a facility’s provider agreement. The agency did state that some providers may receive extensions due to extenuating circumstances if, for example, nursing homes are undergoing major renovations. Regardless of the action CMS takes to enforce the sprinkler requirement, compliance is important. The Government Accountability Office indicated in a 2004 report that no facility fully equipped with sprinklers has ever had a multiple casualty fire. Simply put, sprinklers save lives. In the words of Tom Burke, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, the value of sprinklers as a “safety and patient safety feature is undisputed.